Jean Pisani-Ferry is a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and currently serves as Commissioner-General for Policy Planning for the French government. He is a former director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank.

Comments

The doubt never waned on the other side of the Atlantic that Euro could die a pre-mature death, articles were galore on this topic right from the beginning. I particularly remember one in the National Geographic in the late eighties (rather capricious to have euro dedicated to the natural calamities), where Euro was favored to close at far less than the dollar in valuation; it just happened the other way.

In the treatise 'This time is different', there are many examples devoted to the challenging times that european economies had gone through (including failures of economies as large as Spain, Italy, Austria when they were not even united monetarily), but times could be reversed. There is no doubt that Europe will prove the skeptics wrong this time again; after all monetary union has its advantages and the polity will always take the right course that is best amongst the available options.

Thank you for the excellent review article.Indeed the initial plan backfired, and I cannot really understand the thought behind it except if we apply the usual American expression, "Kicking the can", hoping that things will somehow turn into happy ending, but nobody wanted to deal with the politically sensitive issue of further integration at the beginning.But we cannot build a house in a way that we built the top of the house without walls and foundation, thus it is not surprising that the top, a superficial financial union is falling apart.Unfortunately so far in human history we always made the next step, the next stage of our evolution when the present state has become intolerable, that we had no choice of staying put but we had to move on through blows and suffering.Today we are approaching a similar state not only in Europe but all over the world. It is clear that our present civilization, the whole socio-economic system based on an illusion of constant growth, and excessive overproduction, beyond our means and necessities is unsustainable and now entered a self destructing phase.We can also see that immediately as the chaotic state appears far right and far left forces started to emerge on populist, nationalistic promises.We still have a choice before we enter an inevitable volatile, unpredictable state but for that we have to make the difficult choice the "European forefathers" failed to make, to initiate and achieve the required full integration that would adjust us to the global, integral and interdependent conditions we evolved into.And in order to do that without backlash, demonstrations, riots and even more far left and far right, present leaders and public opinion formers have to start a global, integral education program through mass media, explaining the nature and laws of this global integral human system to each and every human being in an open, transparent and scientific manner, so they could make an informed, free and open decision about joining the new fully integrated, supra-national system after understanding that it is in their bast interest to support the interconnected network in order to achieve individual prosperity and future.We had enough experiments with forced, tricked social, and economical systems, it is time we create something mutually, willingly out of free choice not only by a small minority, but all of us together. Read more

Granted the crisis is forcing European leaders to get serious about the EU and the implications on policy of a common currency. Yet this is against a rising tide of public opinion that now questions the euro altogether.

Europe may never see a charismatic leader capable of inspiring with a compelling vision of the benefits of gradual political union, and the perceived "democracy deficit" grows. Brussels and the EU are increasingly targeted as the cause of all ills, much as the Republican Party's attacks on the federal government have eroded faith in US institutions.

At the very least - and this is hoping for much - the steady drumbeat of us vs them, North vs South name-calling needs to be calmed. Playing to national stereotypes and identifying economic problems as the result of the moral failure of others, as is often the case today, is steadily eroding the ability of Europeans to envision a rationale for union. Read more

Joschka Fischer
laments the fate of the European Union in the wake of the latest round of the Greek drama.

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